For our upcoming The Lives They Lived issue, we invite you to contribute a photograph that illustrates a story from the life of someone close to you who passed away this year. It could be a wedding snapshot, a travel brochure, a book cover, a blueprint of a dream house: any image that you think captures one moment from the life of the person you’re remembering.

The deadline is now as the issue comes out December 25, 2011. They are requesting high-resolution scanned originals or digital images representing the life of that person, along with a 200 word explanation and permission to publish.

Can you pick a single picture that represents an entire life? As I think back over the past of the family members we’ve lost, is there a single image that represents their life in total? That’s a tough question.

For my Aunt June DesRochers, the last picture of the whole DesRocher clan around her taken just before she died a few years ago represents her life to me. She had six kids and managed to raise them by herself after her husband died when the youngest was in diapers. It wasn’t easy, and maybe she didn’t do a perfect job, but the six kids turned out great and they all have children and grandchildren, an amazing family, one that June was actually pretty proud of even though she might not have said much about it.

I’m trying to find it, but the only image I have that comes immediately to mind of my grandmother, Nora Knapp Anderson, is one of her reading to me in bed. I think of it every time I think of her. I don’t remember her physically, so this single photograph represents my visual memory. I was only two or three years old and it was months before she died. As I look through all of the family history photographs I have of the Knapp family, Nora, the only girl among eight boys, is often seen with a brother hanging off of her, helping them read or reading to them, laughing, playing, or just hugging together. Images of the close knit family they were. According to family members, me, her first grandchild, brought back those happy and joyous family feelings and she dreaded missing a moment with me. To me, that photograph represents the sense of togetherness, family, and sharing that made up most of her childhood.

Tent built by Robert and Wayne Knapp circa 1924 along Peshtigo River, Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin. Burnt down by Earl Fugate in bully prank.

For my father, I wonder if I even have a photograph in my collection that would sum up his life. I have pictures that represent moments in his life when he played various roles, and the picture I used on the cover of his funeral card taken in the last few months of his life looking happier and healthier than anyone had seen him in 30 or 40 years, but does that truly represent his life or a moment in time?

Actually, when I stop and think about his father, Howard West, Sr., then I find the picture that completely represents both of their lives. It is of the two of them standing next to each other in their Coast Guard uniforms, standing apart from each other yet looking so much alike. Howard Senior has the same expression I ever remember on his face, stern, unsmiling, just there because someone told him to stand there and he wants to look like he had the idea in the first place. My father, Howard junior (“Bud”) so wanting to look proud but knowing he would never measure up to his father or the expectations of the world in general. While only serving about 18 months in the Coast Guard, almost all of it on land, my father spoke of the Coast Guard as if he was a lifer. It defined who he was, what he did, and he used it to create expectations with others. He wore a Coast Guard cap and told long stories of his “life” in the Coast Guard, but most of those were built upon little moments not a life time. He wanted the world to think of him as someone better than he was, but who he was was good enough, if you just looked past the made-up stories to the caring and simple humanitarian who wanted so much to be like his father, though his father seemed to barely notice.

I’d have to say that photograph of the two of them completely defines my father’s life.

As for my mother, I have many photographs but only one that comes immediately to mind when I think of a “defining” image. The picture is in a frame in a box right now, but I’ll use a similar one of my mother, Ramona Anderson West Boylan Fletcher, from 2006 until I can find the one I’m thinking of. The picture features her dressed up in a bright red pants suit made of nylon or some high-tech fabric, her blonde hair all punked up, a lightning strike painted on her cheek, safety pins in her ears, all dressed up for a fun day in downtown Seattle at the Bumbershoot Festival. We decided we’d dress up like punkers for the event just for fun. She’s swinging off a stop sign, laughing and full of life.

That’s my mother. To the world she is vivacious, energetic, and the first to jump off the bridge, out of an airplane, off a cliff in a hang glider, or tell someone exactly what she thinks of them so they actually thank her afterwards. She’s quick witted, terrible with a joke but great with a pun, and ready for anything. She’s led an incredibly full life and while she tells me she’s too tired to come for a visit or too old to travel, she’s off on another airplane to Cancun, Bahamas, Hawaii, New York, or wherever, sailing her boat, skiing down a mountain, hiking the foothills, dancing the night away.

These are pictures that don’t visually represent a life. They represent the story of the life lived not the life itself. Finding an image to contribute to The New York Times is harder than you think.

If your family member invented something or spent their life’s work on a specific project, then that would be an ideal image to contribute. For the rest of us, this is an excellent exercise in how we define the life of our family members.

Investors.com reported recently on Ancestry.com (ACOM) and their sales growth and status.

In the past quarter, earnings left 125%. Ancestry is outperforming other stocks in the market by 96%, delighting investors, even though its current rating isn’t very high and a sell off has been happening. Still, analytics are predicting a 51% increase by the end of the year or more. Experts report Ancestry has a market cap of USD $2 billion.

Business Insider recently highlighted MyHeritage, a Tel Aviv based company whose aggressive marketing family history model is taking on Ancestry.

According to that article and another by AllThingsD, “MyHeritage may have cracked the code on social payments.”

These sites make money from advertising and premium subscriptions to “advanced” features. MyHeritage gained attention recently for using social media and networking to encourage family members to subscribe in their new “Family Goal” marketing strategy.

By encouraging family members to “share the costs” in MyHeritage, members feel like they are getting a better deal.

Its new “Family Goals” will allow families to encourage each other to chip in to pay together for those subscriptions.

In testing earlier this year, these MyHeritage group plans were split among an average of three family members, and anecdotally families said that by spreading around the commitment to pay for the site, they felt more invested in it.

Combined with personal emails as part of their marketing campaign, it appears that the campaign is creating a sense of loyalty and easily increasing profits for the 57 million registered users service.

While these business sites are more fascinated with the social networking aspect of their marketing campaign, it’s fascinating for family history researchers to consider the wisdom of participating in such services.

While sharing the costs of subscription might help family members feel more vested in the service, does it really encourage them to contribute to the family history research and data?

If a family history researcher can’t find family members to share the cost, can they afford it on their own? Is there a perception now that the service is too costly without splitting the costs? Is the cost, shared or not, truly worth it? What services and benefits are available that can’t be found elsewhere for free or lower costs?

More important for family history bloggers and online publishers, what are the terms of service and who owns the data on these services. Can it be imported and exported freely and easily? What happens if the research dies or loses interest? Will their subscription transfer to someone else? Or will their information be closed out and lost?

Genealogy has been big business online for the past 10 years and I expect it to grow even bigger as it gets easier for people of all ages and levels of web experience become interested in their family’s history, especially with the current aging population.

That was 2006. I was fresh back in the United States after five years spent living with bombs, terrorism, and war in the Middle East. War was on the horizon with Iraq and Korea, and we were already fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s 2011 and we are still fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Libya, with Syria, Iraq, and other countries vying for military action from the United States and others.

So I ask myself, just as they did so long ago right after the “Great War” which became World War I, when will the war end? When will we imagine a world a peace and do all we can to make it a priority, when hurting someone in order to control and dictate is the WORST thing anyone can do and society will not tolerate such behavior? When?

Maybe never, as history has proven time and time again. Maybe humans don’t know much more than war as a way of life. I’d like to believe there is more, but studying genealogy and the impact war has had on the lives of our ancestors, I fear that it will continue in the future. Don’t you?

Rather than exchanging photos, music and cellphone numbers, as many of the 100 million members of MySpace.com do, participants in Ms. Wong’s online community share Y-DNA markers and mtDNA Haplogroups.

The neuroscientist is president and chief executive officer of Genetrack Biolabs Inc., one of the country’s largest DNA testing labs. Recently the Vancouver company broadened its focus beyond paternity suits and other legal testing to capitalize on the emerging field of genetic genealogy.

With a swab of the mouth and access to Genetrack’s site DNAancestryproject.com, clients can trace their lineage for possible connections to famous figures of the past, such as Marie Antoinette, whose DNA has been preserved in a locket of her hair.

The farther back in time, the wider the family connections. For example, researchers have found that one in five men in the northwest of Ireland carry the DNA of the great Irish king Niall Noigiallach, who ruled in the early 5th century. And they estimate that 2 per cent of New York’s European males today also share the royal chromosome.

Turning back the clock to prehistoric times, the website lets participants track the migratory paths their distant ancestors took out of Africa and even connect with people of related groups today.

Amazing. We spend time researching our family history through our blogs and genealogy discussion groups, but imagine a social networking group whose sole purpose to to connect you with your DNA relatives.

The idea behind Genetrack and DNAancestryproject.com is to help those researching their family history through their DNA find common ground and make connections beyond the gene pool. According to the company president, Ms. Wong: “Everybody in the project is connected to everyone else.” Which makes this social networking project even more amazing and wide spread.

Genetrack’s DNA testing kit has been sold online, but just recently started appearing in a few retail sale in stores in Canada, the US, and other places in the world. According to Genetrack, it is most popular for the 47-54 year old age group, but many young people are starting to get into digging into their past. I’d love to walk into a store and buy a DNA testing kit, wouldn’t you?

What makes this new social networking trend fascinating is the new relationships that could form because of this. The concept of “family” has been changing for a long time in the United States and elsewhere as we move farther apart from our blood relatives and turn friends into “family members”.

DNA social networking groups could reverse that trend, turning strangers into blood relatives, allowing us to meet up with family members long separated by time and distance.

In my own family history research, I’ve been able to make connections with long lost family members through genealogy research and resources online, meeting in person family descendants from the 17th and 18th century. I’ve only recently started exploring my own DNA history and expect to make contact with family members separated even farther back.

Each person I connect with brings with them some history and information about their family’s lives as well as their own that helps me fill in the missing puzzle pieces of my own. Answers from the past often help answer questions in the present.

DNA social networking is destined to become a powerful Web 2.0 type force on the web. Would you participate? How would you use such a social networking service? How would it benefit you?

One recent ancestor discovery in the news is a bit shocking, depending upon your perspective of the world around you. However, it is appropriate and not surprising when you have a better perspective on the world around you.

Discovery News announced “Mummy’s Mom Was European” (print version) based upon DNA and genealogy technology research by scientists recently on a child mummy child born between 30 BC and 130 AD in Egypt’s Roman period, about the same time of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

The baby mummy had a European mom, and likely came from a wealthy family. But where he lived and why he died — and at such a young age — remain a mystery. The mummy, exhibited for the first time Thursday at the Saint Louis Science Center, has been the year-long focus of an international team of investigators. The museum said it may be the most extensive research project ever undertaken on a child mummy.

…The challenge was boring into the mummy, which had petrified, to get three samples of degraded muscle, tissue and bone. She succeeded by inserting a thick needle into the chest and shoulder. After that, she extracted DNA using routine methods. Tests showed the boy’s mother was European. She plans more tests to determine his father’s ancestry.

Bowcock said it was amazing to get anything at all from 2,000-year-old DNA.

The surprising part is that they found enough DNA to make any determination. The not-so-surprising part is the parentage of the mummy child as European.

Many of today’s Arab royalty have “white” wives. Some are European and there are even a few Americans. Today’s King Abdullah II of Jordan had an English mother. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is married to Suzanne Saleh Sabet whose mother was Welsh. Former President Anwar al-Sadat’s second wife has an English mother. Another Egyptian ruler, Khedive Abbas Himi, who ruled from 1892-1914 married a Hungarian Countess. In ancient times, many of the Ottoman royalty married French, English, and other European women as part of agreements and pacts to maintain peace and economic trade, using women as property and bargaining chips.

According to Egyptian Consorts by Egy.com, Cairo’s Recollections and History:

Except for Queens Farida and Nariman all of the above consorts were of mixed or foreign ancestry.

In principal the intermarried members of the Mohammed Ali clan were of Turco-Balkan stock. Countess May on the other hand is up-and-down Hungarian. And while Queen Nazli is of French-Greek extraction through her maternal grandparents, both Ikbal Hanem and Sultana Melek were imports from the northern Ottoman provinces. Princess Neslishah meanwhile is the result of a six-century bloodline of imperial Sultans and Khans.

Of Egypt’s four post-monarchy First Ladies, Tahia Abdel Nasser is the daughter of a humble clerk of Iranian origin…On the other hand First Ladies Jehan Raouf and Suzanne Sabet came from educated middle class backgrounds. Both sets of parents were almost carbon copies of each other. Both their paternal grandfathers came from Upper Egypt and both Jehan and Suzanne’s respective fathers pursued medical studies in the United Kingdom while in their twenties opting for British brides.

With all the intermarriage of European women into Arab royalty, why is there so little history of European rulers marrying Arab women? They must have, but I can’t find much. Have you?

Still, why is it surprising that this child mummy had a European mother? Many of today’s Arab royalty come from such mixed blood families, it isn’t surprising that the trend started hundred’s of years ago.

The advancement in DNA to research our family’s ancestors brings with it a lot of surprises and a lot of “well, of course” with it. Aren’t you fascinated by all of it?

Library and Archives Canada (LAC), in partnership with Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), presents Oral Histories of the First World War: Veterans 1914-1918.

The Web exhibition is based on the CBC‘s radio broadcast In Flanders Fields, a series of one-on-one interviews with veterans of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, which aired from November 11, 1964 to March 7, 1965. The website is organized into seven themes: Second Ypres, Vimy Ridge, War in the Air, The Somme, Trench Warfare, Passchendaele and Perspectives on War.

These first-hand accounts, which can be listened to or read via the retyped transcripts, provide the personal insights on the experience of war by one of the greatest generations that Canada has ever produced.

One of the focus areas for some prototyping we plan to do in the near future is an effort to allow users to explore timelines of their ancestors that combine a richness of data into an easy to understand format. This is really hard to do. To give you an idea, here is the type of content we’d like to pull together automatically for any random ancestor a user would like to learn about.

Timelines are critical to help you understand your ancestor’s lives in relationship to chronological events.

Personally, I’d love to see timelines built directly from GEDCOM files for easy insertion into web pages or blogs. This way, I could see how a single member of my family’s life intersects with other members of the family during their life time. For instance, how old was Sally West when her brother was born? Or how old was she when her mother or father died? When did her family move? All those things play an important role in the life of a person and how they reacted, responded, and survived the events.

I’d also love to see a way to integrate current events at the time in the area or country in which they were living. Wars, plagues, massive immigration, all play important roles in people’s lives whether or not they were directly affected. And maybe they were. Maybe they didn’t go off to war but they lost friends and neighbors to the war.

Timelines are very important and currently there isn’t an easy way of including them on web pages. They can be created manually, but there is little software to assist you. I see this as an invaluable tool for genealogy and family history sites on the web.

Don’t you?

What would you use a timeline for on your family history blog?

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today announced that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded the Library of Congress a $2 million grant for a program to digitize thousands of public-domain works, with a major focus on at-risk “brittle books” and U.S. history volumes.

The project, “Digitizing American Imprints at the Library of Congress,” will include not only the scanning of volumes, but also the development of suitable page-turner display technology, capability to scan and display foldouts, and a pilot program to capture high-level metadata, such as table of contents, chapters/sections and index. Past digitization projects have shied away from brittle books because of the condition of the materials, but “Digitizing American Imprints” intends to serve as a demonstration project of best practices for the handling and scanning of such vulnerable works.

Books and collections to be digitized include:

• “Brittle books” from across the Library’s General Collection.
• American history
• U.S. genealogy and regimental histories from the Civil War period
• Six collections of Rare Books including the Benjamin Franklin Collection, selections from the Katherine Golden Bitting and the Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collections of Gastronomy, a selection of first editions from the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division, selections from the Confederate States of America Collection, the Henry Harrisse Collection of Columbiana, and selections from the Jean Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen.
• Books covering the technical aspects of photography and the artistic publications and biographies of photographers

Check the article for more information and links to the event.

Don’t plan on avoiding copying fees in some Brown County offices by using your digital camera.

The Brown County Board will consider an ordinance banning the use of digital cameras or any recording devices in sensitive or private areas of county buildings.

The ordinance would allow department heads to decide on the extent of the ban in their offices. It’s part of a growing trend toward regulating digital cameras on cellular phones in sensitive places.

During my visit last year to Wisconsin researching our family history there, some of the staff warned me that this was coming. The threat appears to be towards camera cell phones violating privacy and copying birth records and other vital records to be used illegally.

Sad days for family history researchers.